The Best OR Worst Idea I've Ever Had???

[Lee McKenna]

Hi Warriors,

I've had a little idea and I wanted to run it past the forum just incase its a bad idea. Personally I think it could work really well. But I know some of you might think different so here goes...

THE MONEY IS IN THE LIST RIGHT???

We all know this but the hard part no matter what niche market your involved with is getting traffic then getting people on your list.

Now I know you can get a lot of traffic online but as you know it takes a lot of work with SEO and if your using PPC or other paid methods its costing you money to put people on your list in Aweber or Get Response.

The idea I had was to go door to door and provide a kind of survey. You could knock on the door and say hi there sorry to bother you my names lees I’m from Company Name and were in the area just doing a short survey to improve the community. This wont take long just a few min of your time can you take a look at the list below and tell me what interests you the most.

Now you do all this even before they get the chance to say I’m not interested so you getting them to tell you what there interested in.

On the list you can have lots of different niche areas. I.E.

Gardening
Dating
Weight Loss
Fitness
Making Money Online
Golf
Holidays
the list goes on and on...

But you would only have big niches what the general public would be interested in.

When you get a positive answer say Holidays you just say fantastic. Don’t worry were not gonna try and sell you a holidays HA HA but what we will be able to do is provide you with free helpful information from time to time via email would that be ok. What is your best email address?

Write the name and email address down and let them know they will receive an email in the next few days.

Now we will be using Aweber to do this and because the customer is not putting in there name and email in them self’s you would need to make the list as single opt in and when you get back home you could manually put in all the name and email address in to your own opt in box on a website that you have set up for this.

I’m sure you can see the power of this. You will be able to build a list in the hundreds of thousands. You will be able to get 1000 emails a day easy with just a few hours work. Better still pay a small team to go around doing this for you.

This is just an idea but what do you think?

[Bill Farnham]

Originally Posted by Lee McKenna

Hi Warriors,

I've had a little idea and I wanted to run it past the forum just incase its a bad idea.

The idea I had was to go door to door and provide a kind of survey.

You will be able to build a list in the hundreds of thousands. You will be able to get 1000 emails a day easy with just a few hours work. Better still pay a small team to go around doing this for you.

This is just an idea but what do you think?

LOL, I think you failed math...

Here's what you should do if you think this is a good idea...Run a side by side test using PPC and Door to Door and see which one of those methods gets more subscribers and at what cost.

It will only take you the first hour to see that one method will outperform the other method dramatically.

If you can't guess which method will make the other method look like the worst possible way to accomplish the task in advance, don't quit your day job.

On another note...if someone approaches you about buying the Brooklyn Bridge, just say no. I won't go into details here, so you'll just have to trust me on this one.

KJ

[Alexa Smith]

I'm afraid KJ is right.

Also: have you factored in the proportion of people who won't really talk to you at all?

Originally Posted by Lee McKenna

You could knock on the door and say hi there sorry to bother you my names lees I’m from Company Name and were in the area just doing a short survey to improve the community.

People will perhaps ask what your connection/relationship is with the community, what incentive you have to "improve" it, which other communities you've previously improved, and how, before taking you seriously at all.

These days, you have a real hurdle to overcome when you knock on people's doors, because everyone knows that it isn't legitimate "market research" if you don't have an ID card from a licensing authority on a tag round your neck. It sounds to me not even as good as those people who ring the bell trying to sell you a new gas supplier and say "We've been getting complaints from this area about high energy bills", to which a common answer - they tell me - is "Who complains to you, why, and what's your authority to receive complaints on this matter?"

Originally Posted by Lee McKenna

You will be able to get 1000 emails a day easy with just a few hours work.

I'm having a really hard time believing that you believe this, Lee. Sorry to sound like a "dampener", but I'll be pretty surprised if you can get 30 real ones.

There may be legal issues involved, as well. They may vary from town to town according to local government policies, council licensing and so on.

[Taylor French]

1000 emails a day?

Do you talk as quickly as the Micro Machines guy?

If you're asking people what subjects they are interested in, you're probably in for at LEAST a 5-10 minute conversation. Even if you could get 10 an hour, that's a maximum of 100 emails a day if you did 10 per hour for 10 straight hours with no break. That's around 700 a week if you worked 10 hours a day 7 days a week. A bit over 35,000 per year if you never took a single day off. It would take you almost 3 years to get 100k names.

I think it's a crazy amount of work to talk to people individually like that. Not enough reward in it.

[Mike Shain]

Um... yeah...

The whole appeal with the internet is it allows you to share information with and sell to people all over the world - not just in your town/neighborhood.

People hate door to door salesmen even if its just a survey. Unless you live in a big city you will have to literally go door to door, to every house in town while preparing to get beat up, mugged and bitten by dogs just for the hope someone is interested in your survey.

People will optin online because they did not have to meet you face to face and even if they give you their name and email address it still has the feeling of anonymity.

I am not trying to tinkle on your cornflakes here but you will have more luck leveraging yourself with the true power of the internet.

Good luck in whichever you choose!

[Taylor French]

Something that might work would be creating business cards, post cards, flyers, etc. and leaving them on car windshields, bulletin boards, gas station cashier counters (with permission), book stores, anywhere legal. Have the URL to your opt-in page on it and offer a free gift. Maybe have an opt-in page set up for each niche, and have several different flyers targeted to each niche. Then just place them in niche-appropriate locations.

Place gardening flyers at nurseries and garden shops, golf flyers at the golf pro shop, whatever.

Still a whole lotta foot work to distribute all of those flyers.

[mywebwork]

I think from the above posts you've answered your question!

Sorry, but this seems like a 19th century solution to a 21st century problem. You'd need an army of people doing this for you (and they probably wouldn't do it for free) and they would be greeted with the same enthusiasm given to Jehovah's Witnesses and Magazine Salespeople.

Offline marketing is a viable practice, but I'm afraid your method wouldn't yield great results. Even if you do collect a few e-mail addresses you'd have to get them to opt-in to your list so that you comply with CAN SPAM (not sure if that is an issue in the UK). You'd probably lose many of them with this step.

You should heed Killer Joe's advice regarding the Brooklyn Bridge - I'd also avoid anyone who promises a great deal on oceanfront property in Arizona!

Bill

[jbode]

There are faster and easier ways of getting subscribers than door to door... it's not worth your time

To me the most important part of building a list is making sure your opt in page converts, so make a really good offer of an in demand product, you will get more subscribers per each visitor and if you back end (autoresponder) is set up decent you have enough money to pay for traffic and break even on the front end (or make a little bit)

[tryinhere]

Now you do all this even before they get the chance to say I’m not interested so you getting them to tell you what there interested in.

I am guessing you have never done door to door, but i will give you 10 / 10 for the idea

[Don Schenk]

[QUOTE

On another note...if someone approaches you about buying the Brooklyn Bridge, just say no. I won't go into details here, so you'll just have to trust me on this one.

KJ[/QUOTE]

Paul Hartunian, a fellow warrior, got his hands on the old timbers from the Brooklyn Bridge when workers were replacing them with new wood. He then had the timbers cut into little 1 inch blocks, and he actually "Sold The Brooklyn Bridge."

As I recall, he even got on the Johnny Carson Show with it. So, if Paul offers you the Brooklyn Bridge, it's authentic.

:-Don

[mywebwork]

Originally Posted by Don Schenk

So, if Paul offers you the Brooklyn Bridge, it's authentic.

:-Don

That's great Don!

I have a chunk of cement that is supposed to be from the Berlin Wall - I need to contact Paul to add to my collection!

Bill

[ForeignProfessor]

I think one of the many many problems with your plan is that you're trying to sell your customers membership to an MLM scheme which is just a pyramid scheme and ILLEGAL in many many countries. (Yournetbiz)

Also your top tips you're giving your email subscribers, such as stamping UK money with a link to your website, are also illegal and would make you liable to prosecution if you ever got anywhere near popular or successful.

When you're promoting MLM schemes which are on the "illegal" end of a scale from "legal" to "illegal" you'd be better off keeping a lower profile.

[dave147]

Way too much physical work for a few email addresses - when you can sit at home and run a targeted PPC campaign, or a free advertising campaign

[Dan Klatt]

I agree with what others have said.

Just to add to the conversation, I got my start as a door-to-door salesman. It may be something you enjoy. I did not, and I was unsuccessful at it.

If you pursue it, I suggest you have high end, tangible products you could offer, based on the most common interests people indicate they have.

Warmly,
Dan

[redicelander]

Hundreds of thousands of list subscribers? So I am going to be able to convince hundreds of thousands of people to subsrcribe to my email list by going door-to-door? Not likely, not likely at all. Maybe if I had 20 years, ha ha. I have done door-to-door and even if you are not selling anything, 50% of people will just close the door in your face saying no thanks as fast as possible or even nothing at all. The other 50% will listen but most would not be willing to give you their email address unless you are a great sales person, I would say optimistically get 10 emails for every 100 doors you knock on, so how much is that really worth? You would do much better using your time on internet marketing strategies rather than this.

So, if you think it's a great idea try it and report back, but I would be very surprised if it turned out to be as great as you initially thought.